Career Consultant Joyce Richman

Greensboro, NC - When you're going out on job interviews, don't go in with the attitude you are overqualified. In your One Minute Career Check, Consultant Joyce Richman tells how and why you should use your experience as a benefit.

Richman says she hears questions like this a lot during workshops. "The person says, 'I'm overqualified for these jobs, I'm smarter than the person sitting across the table from me, I'm probably smarter than most of the people at this company. I just threaten them, what am I supposed to do?'"

Here's Richman's best advice:

"What I tell them, and what I'm telling you is the first thing you need to do is lose the attitude. You may be overqualified, the job you are applying for is with your old company, and one less than the one that you had, that's when you are overqualified. But when you are interviewing for a company, where you don't know their business, you don't know their systems, you don't know their economic scale. You don't know their products, their consumers or who their venders are; you don't know who the suppliers are, you their challenges, you don't know their issues you don't know their people, you can't be overqualified. So approach those as you would anything that is new. Learn... ask questions... demonstrate curiosity. Sure you bring a load of experience with you, that you want to apply, but you can't apply it until you know what you are applying it to," said Richman.